Recently Visited List and Sitemap Menu
Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 has some cool new features that allow for a more efficient navigation. There is the Recently Viewed List, the Sitemap menu and the List Navigation. I love them because they make me more productive navigating CRM. Curious? Read on!
Recently Visited List
One of my favorite end user productivity features in Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 is the Recently Viewed list. It enables me to see all my recently visited records and views. Let’s say I am working on the “A Store” account. It’s one of my main accounts so open it a lot to capture notes, activities etc. In CRM 4.0 repeatedly opening this account, meant navigating to Accounts, finding the right view and finding the account on the view EVERY time I wanted to open it. Now with CRM 2011, after opening it at least once, I can now open the Recently Visited List and open the account record right from there! How easy is that!
In the web client the Recently Viewed List is located in the upper right corner of the sitemap. Just click on it or hit CTRL+SHIFT+7 and the list will open. Not only can you open recently visited records from here, but you can open recently visited views. This is great if you have a couple of main views you work with most of the time.
As you are navigating CRM items are added to the Recently Visited List. The items are sorted from most recently to last recently visited. The list holds up to 40 records and 10 views, so as you are using the system “older” items will be “falling” off the list making room for more recent items.
If you want to avoid having records or views falling off the list you can pin them by clicking on the push pin icon. That way they still move down the list as they get “old” but will remain on the list as long as you want.
The items on the list are not validated after they have been placed there. That means records that are deleted will remain on the list until they naturally “fall off”. Just don’t forget to unpin them.
If you like this feature as much as I do, and if you are using the Microsoft Outlook Client you most likely want to use it there too. To get to the Recently Visited List in Outlook go to the File Tab and click on CRM Recent. BTW, the recently visited items will be the same ones you see when using the web client. So if you happen to use both you won’t lose your list!
Sitemap Menu
Have you ever been annoyed by the fact that when you switch between entities you always get presented with the default view, which isn’t necessarily what you wanted? Not any more! In CRM 2011 you can chose and open any view without having to open the default view first. From the sitemap menu, which you can open by clicking on the little arrow that appears when you mouse over the name, you can now pick the view you want to open directly. Or you can choose other options from the right-click menu such as opening it in a new window or copying/e-mailing a link.
The menu also has a list of Recently Visited records for that entity. It basically works the same way as I described above. The only difference is that these recently visited records are just for that particular entity. So if you look at the sitemap menu for Accounts, you will see the recently visited Accounts. If you look at the sitemap menu for Contacts, you see the recently visited Contacts and so on. This Recently Visited list can contain up to 6 recent items. Pinning does not apply here.
So, with these capabilities, you are now able to directly navigate to any recently visited record or view!
